HIST 212 - Pagans, Christians, and Barbarians

Credits: (3)
This course provides an overview of the history of the late antique period, the era that bridges the classical and medieval worlds. This course will focus on the Mediterranean region writ large-including Europe, the Middle East, East Africa, Arabia, and the Indian Ocean-from the end of the second to the beginning of the eighth century. The five centuries covered in this class saw some of the most momentous changes in the Mediterranean World. Polytheism declined from the primary mode of religious thought to near extinction, while two new faiths-Christianity and Islam-gained millions of converts and became world religions. The two great empires, the Roman Empire and Persian Empire, collapsed, or at least fundamentally transformed, in the face of new challenges. The largely unified Mediterranean culture of the beginning of the period fractured into three very different successor civilizations: those of Western Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic Middle East.